THE GREAT FALLACY
That the world is badly ordered for humanity is a self-evident truth of
which the observant scarcely need reminding. It is equally obvious, from
the exquisite order and symmetry of animal and vegetable life, that
Providence is not to blame for the colossal mess into which civilization
has managed to lead the majority of mankind.
Man is himself responsible for the present state of human affairs; and
although great things have been undeniably accomplished during the
progress of the nations, the magnificent achievements of exceptional
individuals pale beside the stupendous blundering of the many.
It must surely be clear to everybody that there has been some evil
influence at work to arrest the fair promise and development of the
human race. The splendid march of intellectual progress from the dark
ages to the brilliant dawn of the nineteenth century, with its
glittering array of master minds and its titanic roll of genius, has
been suddenly brought to a dead halt. Here and there, during the past
generation, great figures have struggled up on to the world's stage and
grappled with the ebb-tide. But the majestic stream of mediocrity has
swept away their dykes, and obliterated their landmarks with its
increasing volume.
The remarkable fact can hardly have escaped attention that the more
humanity attempts to equip itself for the serious business of life, by
forcing itself into an educational strait-waistcoat, the more rapid
becomes the disappearance of character and genius, and even of ordinary
talent. Everybody is getting ground down to a level. It is scarcely
possible to point to a single civilized man and say: 'There is somebody
in whom every faculty has been developed and natural talent perfected to
its utmost capability.' The most that can be said of the individual is:
'There goes a Cambridge man or a grammar-school man, and when you have
knocked all the nonsense out of him you'll find he's not a bad fellow at
bottom.'
We are not what we have made ourselves, but what we have chosen to allow
others to make us. Whatever may once have been the nursery of the human
race, it is now to a great extent the school. Some part--it generally is
the best part--of education takes place outside the class-room; but it
must be remembered that the atmosphere of home is generally impregnated
with the conventional traditions of the school and of the university.
The evil influence that is so obviously undermining social and national
life must, therefore, first be sought in the principles upon which
education systems have been founded.
Nothing is more astonishing than to reflect upon the unintelligent
grounds on which people base their adherence to the principles of modern
education. They are unable, in the first place, to get over the fact
that their forefathers were brought up in the same fashion before them.
It is a sheer impossibility for most people to question anything that
has been going on for any length of time unchecked.
The undisputed possession of a custom for so many years converts it into
the legal property of the nation, whence it derives a sacred character,
and nobody dreams of meddling with it. Any abuses it may bring in its
train are then conveniently ascribed to the perversity of Providence.
The cherished convention is never questioned. That is the remarkable
thing about it. People can be brought to understand, by means of a
flourish of dazzling prospectuses and newspaper advertisements, that a
bicycle is an improvement on a bone-shaker, or that pneumatic tyres are
more comfortable on rough roads than iron-rimmed wheels. But that
appears to be the set limit of their comprehension.
They are capable of being made to grasp, after nearly exhausting the
resources of a wealthy syndicate, something that obviously affects their
material comfort. But progress in ideas, or anything in the shape of
moral revolution, has to undergo a thousand-fold more tortuous process
before it can be made to filter through a convention. The academic
product is, it must be remembered, a bundle of conventions. If the
article has been properly manufactured, and bears the hall-mark of the
maker and the stamp of the country of its origin, there is nothing else
there for the truth to filter into. It simply drops through and
vapourizes without disturbing anything.
Conventionality is therefore an insuperable obstacle, as far as the
majority of minds are concerned, to the discovery that the established
principles of education are absolutely false. These principles will
never be questioned. It is good enough for the average man that his
fellow-creatures have been contented with them since time immemorial,
and that they are diligently practised in the schools and colleges whose
names have been household words for generations past.
Next to this antiquated conservatism of the least intelligent and most
dispiriting type, comes the false shame that the majority of people
exhibit when caught displaying ignorance of any of the facts which
cramming systems have pronounced to be indispensable to a general
education. Probably more real culture is nipped in the bud by the
ridiculous assumption that everybody must be a walking encyclopaedia,
than by all the Philistine conventions and stupidities put together.
In the course of a recent conversation with an exceptionally brilliant
woman of my acquaintance, it transpired that she believed Winchester and
Cambridge to be in the same county. This lack of geographical knowledge
did not appear, however, to have impaired her intellectual faculties.
There are many persons who can accurately locate any town in England,
and yet are vastly inferior in mental capacity to the lady who thought
that Cambridge was in Hampshire.
Why should an individual know more than it is useful and convenient for
him to know? For the student of foreign politics it is essential to be
aware of the geographical difference between Tokio and Peking; but of
what earthly use would this knowledge be to a man who devoted the whole
of his life to inquiring into the domestic routine of the extinct dodo,
or to the improvement of agriculture by the application of scientific
manures?
Life is short, and it is only possible within the limits of the brief
span allotted to us upon earth to acquire a certain number of facts. It
is monstrously absurd to sacrifice our best years in stuffing so many
facts into the brain, in order to avoid being laughed at by a few
thin-minded pedants as an ignoramus. Some consolation, at least, might
surely be derived from the reflection that many of the greatest geniuses
whom the world has produced were profoundly ignorant as to ninety per
cent. of the things which are considered to be indispensable knowledge
at the present day.
Nobody can hope to read all the books that are popularly supposed to
have been digested by the well-educated man. It would be impossible to
get through a tithe of them. Yet how many people there are who will
sooner tell a deliberate lie, than acknowledge having omitted to read
some classic that happens to be mentioned in the course of conversation!
And this is simply due to the infatuated belief that culture consists in
stuffing one's self with the ideas of other people. A man whose brain
was teeming with his own thoughts and creations, but who had neglected
to stock it with the hundred thousand conventional facts culled from the
hundred best books selected for him by other people, would be looked
upon as an uneducated boor by cultured pedants of the conventional type.
It will be seen, therefore, that this false shame, inspired by an
unwholesome terror of public ridicule, plays a very important part in
tying people to the apron-strings of education, and warping their
judgment.
But there is also a third factor which must be taken seriously into
account. This is the widespread credulousness not only as to the
efficacy, but as to the indispensability, of the ordinary methods of
instruction as mental training. People have actually come to believe
that no one can think without being taught to do so by means of all
kinds of mathematical and classical gymnastics.
Whence comes this monstrous notion I do not pretend to be capable of
explaining--I merely note its universal existence. Probably no doctrine
is more deeply ingrained in the mind of the average person. There does
not seem to be any logic or sense in it; but somebody with a huge sense
of humour must have once started the craze--much in the way that a
practical joker will stare intently at nothing in a London street until
he has collected a large and inquisitive crowd, and will then steal
quietly away, leaving everybody looking vacuously at the same spot.
In the whole history of education there is no greater absurdity than the
notion that a boy can be taught to think by training his mind backwards
and forwards in the conjugation of irregular verbs and the vagaries of
Latin or Greek inflections. Exercises of this ingeniously ridiculous
kind only serve to empty the brain of ideas, and to make room for the
reception of facts crammed in on the wholesale system. It is an accepted
fact, however, that the brain, in order to pursue its normal functions,
must first be subjected to a course of training in abstract subjects as
far removed as possible from all human interest; that common sense, in
other words, is a product of Greek roots and algebraical formulae--not of
the natural application of the thinking faculties to the ordinary
circumstances of everyday life.
The hopeless imbecility of this tenet of faith is only equalled by the
depth to which it has taken root in the popular mind. The wonderful
thing is that the total failure of the plan has not long ago convinced
everybody of its uselessness. But that is at once the mischief and the
charm of the convention: no amount of practical demonstration will
prejudice anybody against it.
In this way the great fallacy of education has been allowed to grow up
and to spread its false and obnoxious principles like a network over the
whole civilized world. With all the baneful effects produced by these
fallacious dogmas staring them in the face, people do not seem to have
been capable of tumbling to the fact that the origin of the social evils
which surround them lies in the very calf of gold that they and their
forefathers have set up and worshipped.
Even the reformers of education appear to have deceived themselves.
Many of them--Arnold and Thring conspicuous amongst their number--have
tried to abolish this abuse or to remedy that defect; but not one has
gone to the root of the evil, and has boldly stated that the whole
system of education is based upon totally erroneous principles--designed,
not to encourage progress and generate ideas, but to stifle development,
and to place an insurmountable obstacle in the path of the evolution of
humanity.
The world has acquiesced in the deceit, and so the great fallacy has
grown up unchecked, and, like a rolling stone, gathered moss from
generation to generation, until its hideous proportions seem to have
embraced the universe, and to have shut out every particle of light from
the vision of unhappy, convention-haunted mankind.